McCAFFERY: Manuel's legacy cemented at Granite Run Mall

Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel (41) blows a chewing gum bubble as he keeps his eye on a baseball game during the third inning against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — There are two signs planted on the borders of Buena Vista, Va., one on the way into town, the other on the way out. Welcome, they boast, to the hometown of Charlie Manuel, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

“They told me when they put them up that if I ever wasn’t the manager any more, they would take them down,” Manuel said Saturday. “I hope they don’t.”

He was half-kidding yet still a touch concerned about that as he was handed a photo of one of those signs during an autograph session at the Granite Run Mall. But as he boldly signed the picture with a blue, felt-tip pen, he’d already had his answer: He will always be the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, if not in the dugout, if not on payday, if not on the corporate tree, then in the guts of the fans.

It is why he received a standing ovation from a crowd of shoppers who’d waited for hours to pay anywhere from $50 to $65 for him to sign something, anything — a bat, a ball, even a photo of him leaving Citizens Bank Park a night earlier after being fired, his lunch bag in his left hand.

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“That was absolutely amazing,” he said, of his entrance, which was loud and sustained and eventually rhythmic, spilling from the mall’s upper level, echoing through its corridors. “It was unreal.”

It was a tribute, and it was understandable, for Manuel wasn’t just any former Phillies manager, he was one of two, just two, who had led the franchise to a championship, and the one who had broken a 25-year wait for a Broad Street parade of any sort. By Saturday, it hardly mattered that his ill-assembled, aging team had been 4-19 since the All-Star break. All that mattered was that he was 1-0 in rain-delayed World Series games against the Tampa Bay Rays.

“I have been here for three hours,” said Sue Sheffer of Springfield, who was the first in a line that stretched from the center of the mall to a far corner. “I wasn’t going to miss this. I was coming here even before he was fired. I thought he was great.”

The event had been arranged earlier, when Manuel was in the process of winning 1,000 career games as a manager, not when he was informed by Ruben Amaro Jr. that he would have no immediate opportunities to make it 1,001. Davey Lopes, a coach on Manuel’s 2008 championship staff, signed autographs Saturday for about an hour, at $20 per item, before Manuel arrived. Event organizers said they sold 154 tickets for Lopes signatures, and at least three times as many for Manuel, whose popularity had ballooned, not faded, over the previous 24 hours.

“It probably did,” said Aubrey Proud, the mall’s marketing director. “There is certainly an interest in Charlie Manuel. And I think people just respect what he has done.”

Manuel was scheduled to appear for about 90 minutes, yet agreed to stay for as long as it would take for everyone to enjoy a chance to say hello, or thank you, or remember-when, or that Jimmy Rollins never should have been his leadoff hitter, at least not for so long.

“I made a commitment to be here,” he said. “And I was going to keep it.”

A day earlier, Manuel stressed that he had never quit anything in his life, so there he was Saturday, on time, at a table hard by the cell-phone kiosk.

“This was very important for me to be here,” said Brian Boyd of Wilmington. “He was a big inspiration for the city of Philadelphia and for baseball.”

Manuel appeared to enjoy the event, never complaining of writers’ cramp, never complaining of a front office that had made him manage so many relievers who’d pitched like they had writers’ cramp. Just the same, he knew where he would rather have been headed.

“Hey,” he said, to a couple of baseball writers. “You guys are going to the game tonight, aren’t you?”

The manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, as those signs will forever reflect, would have expected nothing else.

Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com. Follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery.